1. Technical Field
The present invention relates to a liquid ejecting apparatus.
2. Related Art
An ink jet recording apparatus which records a character, an image, or the like onto a recording medium, is known as a liquid ejecting apparatus which ejects liquid. Such ink jet recording apparatus ejects ink onto a recording medium through nozzles provided in an ejection head while transporting the recording medium so that a character, an image, or the like is formed on the recording medium. A cap which covers an ejection region of the ejection head is provided in the ink jet recording apparatus.
In an ink jet recording apparatus, a printing failure is caused in some case. The printing failure is caused because nozzles of an ejection head are clogged due to increase in viscosity of ink, solidification of ink, attachment of dusts, further, mixing of air bubbles, or the like. Further, when ink is initially filled into an ejection head, liquid in the head is required to be discharged through nozzles. Therefore, an ink jet ejecting apparatus is configured to perform a maintenance operation such as a flushing operation in which liquid in the nozzles is forcibly discharged, separately from ejection onto a recording medium.
In the flushing operation, liquid discharged from the ejection head is received by using a liquid reception portion such as a cap. A flow-out port from which the received ink flows out is provided in the cap, for example. A suction portion such as a pump is connected to the flow-out port, for example.
In recent years, an ink jet recording apparatus using inks of multiple colors such as magenta, light magenta, cyan, light cyan, yellow, and black has been proposed in order to improve printing quality at the time of color printing. When inks of multiple colors are used in such a manner, nozzle opening rows corresponding to the number of colors are required to be provided in an ejection head. Therefore, for example, a configuration in which a plurality of ejection heads are mounted on one carriage has been known (for example, see JP-A-2000-153622). In the configuration disclosed in JP-A-2000-153622, a plurality of caps each of which corresponds to each of the plurality of ejection heads are provided and a separate pump is connected to each cap.
However, the configuration in which a separate pump is connected to each of the plurality of caps is preferable in terms of maintenance properties such as suction accuracy but increases in cost.